With the plans for the return of English Premier League football come some logistical issues about how business can and should be conducted in anticipation of the 20/21 season. Unlike other UEFA leagues like the cancelled Eredivisie, the Premier League is committed to finishing its 19/20 season, which throws delays into the existing cycle. Continuation both alleviates difficulties and gives rise to others, as bookmakers can stand on their season bets while the league is pressed to fit a significant amount of football into an ever more finite span of time.
Matches are intended to resume starting June 8th, behind closed doors and contained to a limited number of venues. The final 92 games of the season are expected to be completed on July 27th. This offsets the summer transfer window, originally scheduled to run from mid-June to September 1st. Now the next season is being lined up for a mid-September start, leaving only a marginal window open for transfer business to take place in the late summer.
The problems this timeline crunching brings to clubs brings football politics into a new arena. Smaller clubs have good reason to fear that wealthier clubs will take advantage of the unprecedented market upheavals to scoop up their top players with offers they are in no position to refuse. Manchester United’s manager, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, has unabashedly relayed his intent to make the most of the unusual financial circumstances for the benefit of his lineup. It is expected that on this basis changes to the standard transfer system will be lobbied for by at-risk clubs.
An earlier proposed solution to this issue is the extension of the summer transfer window indefinitely. A flexible transfer schedule would then bleed into the normally scheduled January window, after which all playing fields would return to even. Further conversations with the UEFA will need to take place before any such solution is implemented. Like much of what a post-corona world will look like, how exactly the transfer window problem will be resolved, a pivotal issue for many clubs, remains very much up in the air.
